We see our nation as a world energy and would love our elephant to overhaul the dragon past the mountains. Today the G20 brand is displayed on 1,000,000 hoardings in India. BRICS, too, has been a well-known acronym. But Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is presently making a conspicuous trip to China that appears little observed in India whilst China’s party-owned media trumpets the Xi-Lula bonhomie.

Brazil’s commerce with China quantities to twice its commerce with the US, which exhibits up subsequent because the nation’s second most necessary financial associate. India, at quantity 10 on Brazil’s international trade list, locations forward of the UK and France.

However, if Brazil, which is Latin America’s largest and most populous nation, had been to rank its financial companions by a democracy-cum-population metric, India can be close to the highest.

Let’s carry up a 3rd continent and nation right here. In phrases of inhabitants and a democratic framework, three international locations appear to steer their continent: India in Asia, Brazil in Latin America, and Nigeria in Africa. While India and Brazil are members of BRICS in addition to of G20, Nigeria, curiously sufficient, belongs to neither, although in GDP phrases oil-rich Nigeria appears just lately to have changed South Africa because the primary nation in all of Africa.

We must also mark that Nigeria is the primary vacation spot in Africa for China’s investments, aside from being a major provider of oil to China. Yet nothing can take away the similarities between India, Brazil and Nigeria. Extending past measurement and a democratic structure, these similarities embody inhabitants variety. In reality, variety could also be their major frequent characteristic.

Of the greater than 200 million folks that Nigeria now has, about 45 % are Muslim and 45 % or so are Christian. However, faith just isn’t crucial distinction between one Nigerian and one other. Whether by delivery you’re a Yoruba or an Igbo or belong to a different regional ethnicity appears to matter extra within the nation’s extra affluent, and predominantly Christian, southern half. Nigeria’s overwhelmingly Muslim northern half too is influenced by its personal ethnic divides.

It was within the Fifties that folks like me first learnt of Yorubas, Igbos (then spelt Ebos), and the Muslims of Nigeria’s north. Nnamdi Azikiwe was a well-known Igbo chief in Nigeria’s battle for freedom from Britain, and Chief Awolowo was an equally well-known Yoruba chief, however Nigeria’s first prime minister, who remained in that put up for 9 years, was Abubakar Balewa (1912-66), a Fulani Muslim from the north.

Although Nigeria has had to deal with secession and army takeovers, its democratic journey has been spectacular, and it has displayed pragmatic statesmanship in making an attempt to make sure that Christian and Muslim leaders alternate on the nation’s prime. That conference won’t, nevertheless, be noticed this yr. On May 23, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the winner of Nigeria’s current elections, is scheduled to succeed one other Muslim, Muhammadu Buhari, as president.

Tinubu’s victory brings the primary place again to somebody from Nigeria’s south. Unlike Buhari, who was born within the northern state of Katsina right into a household of Fulani and Hausa Muslims, Tinubu by ethnicity is a Yoruba from the south. He is wholly recognized with Lagos, the megacity located on Nigeria’s southwestern coast and simply the African continent’s most populous metropolis. Until 1991, Lagos was Nigeria’s capital. By making Abuja within the nation’s center the brand new capital, Nigerians firmed up their nationwide unity.

If maybe 10,000 Nigerians stay right this moment in a spread of Indian cities, most of them as college students, the estimated determine for Indians residing in Nigeria is eight lakhs, if we go by Wikipedia, which cites the BBC because it supply. Given such numbers, the potential for partnership between Indians and Nigerians is clearly one thing that the Chinese dragon should envy.

Brazilians will not be as noticeable in India as Nigerians are. Their nation is an efficient deal extra distant than Nigeria, and the variety of Indians who’ve made Brazil their dwelling is way smaller compared with Nigeria. However, Indians are most likely extra conversant in the title of the present Brazilian president, 77-year-old Luiz Lula da Silva, higher identified merely as Lula, than with the names Tinubu and Buhari.

In his earlier spell as Brazil’s president, from 2003 to 2010, Lula’s pro-poor insurance policies typically made information in India. More just lately, he made larger information when, going from state prisoner to president-elect, Lula defeated the right-wing incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro, in an election the world carefully watched. Lula’s victory over Bolsonaro delighted many in India and elsewhere, who had been alienated by Bolsonaro’s seeming unconcern over Covid and over the shrinking of the Amazon Forest, and by Bolsonaro’s obvious willingness to cripple democratic establishments.

Although Portuguese is the language that Brazilians converse, Portugal, the European energy that after managed Brazil, ceased way back to be a significant factor in Brazil’s life. Nonetheless, a standard Portuguese connection previously hyperlinks Goa, Mumbai and another components of India to Brazil. Then there may be soccer and the love that Indians harbour for Brazilian and different South American stars.

Brazil too, with greater than 200 million individuals, has quite a lot of ethnicities like in Nigeria and India. The ethnicities embody Indigenous American, European, African and Asian blood. It was slavery which centuries in the past bequeathed African blood to Brazil. Unlike North America, Brazil was comfy with inter-racial marriages and alliances. Much of its present inhabitants is thus a fusion. Yet racism is much from absent, observers say, in Brazil.

India, Brazil, and Nigeria clearly have a lot in frequent. Their trendy tales recommend that the state of human rights in a various nation could also be strongly linked to the respect and friendship that completely different communities give to at least one one other.

Brazil and Nigeria are India’s counterparts in South America and Africa, and there may be scope for tremendously strengthening our relationships with these two main international locations within the areas of commerce, worldwide politics, artwork, and tradition. In each circumstances, India’s hand could also be stronger than China’s, regardless of the latter’s giant benefit in commerce.

However, we should shield our democracy. Indians, Nigerians and Brazilians can study from each other how a big nation’s variety could also be changed into wealth and energy.

(Rajmohan Gandhi’s newest e book is “India After 1947: Reflections and Recollections”)

Disclaimer: These are the non-public opinions of the writer.